[wp-forums] Commercial Themes And The WP Support Forums

[Jeff Chandler]

While I’m still not 100% what is piracy and what is not, I know for sure 
that the theme repository should not provide support for any commercial 
theme. However, upon further discussion, it appeared to me that it seems 
to have reached the point where perhaps the best course of action for 
the WordPress.org support forums as they relate to themes is to only 
provide support for up and coming developers or only for themes that are 
hosted within the repository. Supporting only themes that are within the 
repository should limit the amount of threads popping up asking for help 
decoding themes. Also, the notion of whether a theme is pirated or not 
is thrown out the window because you’ve eliminated support for 
everything but these two items.

The catch 22 in all of this is that the WordPress.org support forums 
exist to help and educate users where need be. Enacting the provisions 
set forth above would shut out a lot of users from receiving support. 
The provisions would also not solve the underlying problem of encrypted 
themes being used by hundreds of WordPress users. However, with stricter 
guidelines for theme support, perhaps the educational benefits would 
finally sink in to those who fall victim to using one of these encrypted 
themes.

This then led to the discussion on whether commercial GPL themes should 
be allowed to have support on the WordPress.org support forums. 
Personally, I feel that it's crossing the line and the WordPress.org 
support forums should not be used to provide support for commercial 
themes or plugins. My proposal I thought would kill two birds with one 
stone (Encrypted themes needing to be decoded and Commercial Theme 
Support) but it's becoming clear that this proposal would alienate some 
folks from receiving support.